


Upheaval

by OxfordOctopus



Series: OxfordOctopus' Snips'n'Snaps [19]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Alt-Power Taylor Hebert, Canon-Typical Violence, Disasters, Earthbending & Earthbenders, Emma's betrayal happens during high school, Endbringer Fight, Everything else happens at the canonical times, Gen, It's only Taylor's school year which are aged up, Minor Character Death, Taylor is aged up to 18, just btw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23040364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: Leviathan waits for nobody. It is not a monster in a movie, it is simply a monster. It comes, it ruins, and then it leaves, leaving death and drowned cities in its wake.Taylor - Renovate - has to deal with that.
Relationships: Taylor Hebert | Skitter | Weaver & Sabah | Parian
Series: OxfordOctopus' Snips'n'Snaps [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1435474
Comments: 3
Kudos: 117





	Upheaval

**Author's Note:**

> This was my one and probably only attempt at writing an Endbringer fight. If I have to in the future, I will, but jeez it's hard to do.

The Endbringer sirens weren’t something Taylor would like to hear ever again. They made a droning noise, a ‘wa’-like sound stretched out beyond what was possible for a human, elevated into a keening pitch that made her ears ring. The noise echoed, bounced through Brockton and left no single part of it deaf to its presence, though in some places it probably wasn’t all that loud. Even with streets congested with traffic and people rushing like an angry tide, the noise was unmistakable, impossible to ignore.

At the front of the battle zone? It was  _ deafening _ .

Away from the crowds, away from police barricades and panicking families. Away from her father and the shelter that she hoped he was in, Taylor was alone. Sirens roared, other parahumans flickered into existence meters away, ferried in by Strider, a Mover she couldn’t put a name to, and a handful of Tinkers who could operate and create teleportation-based technology. The Triumvirate were present as well, Eidolon lurking off near Alexandria while Legend looked to be talking to Armsmaster in hushed tones. Dragon was probably present as well in some capacity, if her suits flying around were any indication.

Not too far off in the distance a stormcloud rolled and churned, a twisted, impossible-to-miss reminder that Leviathan was on his way to Brockton.

Taking a steadying breath in, Taylor glanced towards the entrance to the larger building. She hadn’t entered yet, and she wasn’t alone in her hesitation; dozens of people just like her - at least the ones who weren’t teleported in or hired by the Protectorate in some capacity - just...  _ lingered _ . Like dead people who didn’t quite know it yet. Aside from Circus, looking haggard and barely put-together, a striking contrast to their normal presentation, Taylor didn’t know a single other independent in the crowd, hero or villain.

It was daunting, an impossible thing to contemplate. Here she was, barely a month after getting her powers, powers that she’d only put to work in mostly non-combat scenarios. She’d kept herself relatively separate from the gang fights that had taken place ever since Bakuda started carpet bombing residential areas, and had instead put her powers to work in the reconstruction of buildings, or at least the rudimentary creation of fortifications. Sure, she’d had a scrape or two; people didn’t just leave parahumans alone, especially unaligned rogues with abilities like hers, but fighting hadn’t been a staple of her - admittedly brief - indie hero career.

Yet, she still stood here, in her costume, wearing that same white half-mask. It wasn’t really anything impressive—the costume; black slacks with suspenders over a white button-up shirt and dress shoes. She could’ve went a more fantasy-based angle to mix with her powers, but for all the world had Leyline, Peak, and Cobblestone, it didn’t have  _ her _ . She’d wanted to be unique, to set herself apart from other geokinetics and geo-based Tinkers - something that was far more common than you’d really think it would be - and so she’d become Renovate. She’d based herself around politeness, looking fancy, downplaying the true extremes of her power and putting her back into helping people get back up off their feet in the wake of Bakuda.

It hadn’t been easy, not one bit, but it’d been rewarding. For the first time since the incident at Winslow, she was able to help people.

But now there was Leviathan. A city-breaker, he-who-sunk Newfoundland and Kyushu, each incident generating massive tsunamis that nearly doubled the property damage and total civilian deaths. Of course, that wasn’t a normal occurrence, and even if he did rip Brockton Bay down into the sea, it would probably just result in Boston flooding, unlike the Newfoundland wave that destroyed nearly the entirety of Cape Breton and devastated a lot of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward’s Island.

Still, it was a small mercy for what she was about to face. For all that she felt that she could do this, that she would step through that threshold and find a way to help, an equal part of her  _ screamed _ . She was terrified, wholly and completely; the only thing that might be worse would be the Simurgh. At least with Behemoth, nobody would be stupid enough to send a non-Brute into his death field, but Leviathan? She had things she could offer in the prevention of further damage. She was no slouch when it came to using her powers, perhaps she wasn’t the greatest offensively, but with those who made the wall to protect the city? She could see her place.

Right up near the front.

Squaring her shoulders and gritting her jaw, Taylor pawed at her slacks, reaching inside for just long enough to retrieve a pair of gloves. Her father’s gloves, old and dingy things he never put to use after Mom died. She really wasn’t sure why or how he got them, they did seem a bit...  _ bourgeoisie _ for a unionist, in all honesty. Satin-like cloth, a good fit even on her hand, and enough thickness that it was clear they weren’t just costume apparel. Slipping them on felt a bit like slipping on her mask had; ritualistic, comforting in ways that she hadn’t experienced in a long, long time. Fitting her fingers into the gloves, feeling the slight resistance, seeing how the black matched her costume, it was soothing, tempering.

She was at a crossroads. She could leave, right now, promise herself she’d return to help pick people out of the rubble, act as a relief effort. She could go into an alley, take off her costume, put it all away into a bag and go find her father at one of the shelters. Nobody would blame her, and yet...

Taking a step forward, Taylor ignored the dull echo of her power as it travelled through the concrete, reaching out to other solid things. People, too blurry with her shoes on, echoed back, vague impressions, like smudges on a topographic map. She kept walking, pushed the secondary sight of her ability into the back of her mind, and got a nod from the armored PRT officer as she passed.

The interior of the room was predictably packed. Legend was at the front of the room, having apparently gone inside in the time she spent thinking about her own worth. The other Triumvirate, alongside Armsmaster and what looked to be Miss Militia, had also migrated into the building. New Wave, out in full, were off to one side, staring down what was left of the E88. Apparently, they’d taken significant losses in their bid to kill Bakuda. They succeeded in their goal, admittedly, but at the cost of Fenja, Menja, Othala, Victor, Krieg and Cricket. A sizeable loss if there was ever one.

Lung sat alone, both of his lieutenants dead.

The Protectorate sat towards the front, closer to New Wave but away from the bulk majority of independents. She was just a single face in a larger crowd, by contrast to the gleaming presentation of the Wards. There weren’t any new additions or losses, which wasn’t a surprise, but the fact that Vista was there did somewhat set Taylor ill at-ease. How old was she, anyway?

Deciding not to think about it too much, Taylor found an open seat near to Parian, who nodded easily in her direction. There were a few other independents nearby as well, mostly those who didn’t want to sit next to the fascists, an angry dragon, or the Protectorate itself, for whatever reason that might be.

Turning her gaze back to Legend - blue spandex and immaculate build aside - Taylor realized that he had been talking.

“—I’m telling you your chances now because you deserve to know, and we so rarely get the chance to inform those individuals brave enough to step up and fight these monsters. The primary message I want to convey, even more than briefing you on the particulars of his abilities, organizing formations and battle plans, is that I do not want you to underestimate Leviathan. I have seen too many good heroes,” Legend paused for a second, turning his head towards one of the windows. “Villains, too, die because they let their guard down.”

Taylor followed his gaze, freezing at the sight. Brockton had been the victim to plenty of tropical storms, rain wasn’t exactly a novel concept on the coast of the Atlantic, but she’d never seen it rain this hard before. It was like the rain was a  _ sheet _ , the continuous downpour rattling the windows, each drop so close together that it resembled water coming out of a faucet. Already, Taylor could imagine the water crashing against the sidewalks, threatening to overflow poorly-designed drainage systems that hadn’t seen repairs in years.

“We think of Leviathan as the middle child; he was the second of the three to arrive. He is not the physical powerhouse Behemoth is, nor the cunning manipulator that the Simurgh so often proves to be. That said, I would advise you to think of him as having many of the strengths of both siblings at once. You’ve seen the videos on television and the internet. You know what he is physically capable of. I want to be clear that despite the image he might convey, he is not stupid, and he can display a level of cunning and tactics that can and  _ will _ catch you off guard.”

There was no room for second doubts, even when hearing all of this. Taylor clenched her fists together and kept her gaze directed forward. Dwelling on the rain wasn’t important, not right now.

“I will tell you what you may not know from the videos. He feels pain, he does bleed, but few attacks seem to penetrate deep enough past the surface to seriously harm him. He is like the other two Endbringers in this respect.” Legend keep his gaze steady on all of them, hands loose but his body primed to move, tensed like a spring. “What sets him apart is his focus on water. You’re likely aware of his afterimage, his water echo. This is no mere splash of water. At the speeds Leviathan can move, surface tension and compressibility make water harder than concrete. He also has a crude hydrokinesis, the ability to manipulate water, and there will be water on the battlefield. We believe that this is what lets him move as fast as he does when he is swimming. Faster than he is normally, far faster than any speedster we have on record.”

Without missing a beat, Legend continued, “Were it just that, this fight might still warrant a show of force like what we’ve gathered here. But things are more serious than that, which brings me to our primary concern. As much as Dragon and Armsmaster’s advance warning might give us the opportunity to make this a good day, other issues threaten to make it just the opposite.”

Nobody said anything, his words hung in the air like a primed gun. For the first time, Legend’s face slipped from firm-yet-confident into something less firm and less confident, not weary, but close. “I spoke of Leviathan as a hydrokinetic. I can’t state this enough—Leviathan is primarily a hydrokinetic on a macro scale. There is no better illustration than the days where Leviathan won.”

Legend named them all. Newfoundland, half a million dead and an island gone. Kyushu, millions dead in the immediate aftermath, many millions more due to the refugee crisis that followed; a country broken on its own shores. Sana’a, close to two hundred fifty thousand dead when Leviathan  _ dragged the city into the sea _ .

“Brockton Bay is a soft target, like Kyushu, Newfoundland and Sana’a. It has an aquifer, and was chosen due to its closeness to the coastline. Tidal waves, tremors, and any intentional damage he does to the underground reservoir itself will weaken the structural integrity of the city. Given enough time, it will collapse, and with it...”

It wasn’t hard to imagine. The city would fold in on itself, buried in its own sediment only to be rapidly drowned by the ocean shortly after. There’d be nothing left, if Leviathan was given the chance.

Legend paused, glanced back towards the window. The rain was worsening again. “We have to end this fast. Each wave he brings on top of us is stronger than the last. This means we have two priorities. First, we cannot let him out of our sight. From the moment the battle is initiated, we hem him in, sustain an offensive onslaught. If we let him slip past our defensive lines, precious time will be wasted chasing him, getting him in another situation where we can contain his movements.”

Capes all around her were getting antsy. A low murmur of noise had started to pick up, quiet discussion that people couldn't help but take part in.

“Our second priority is that we need to find ways to hurt him. If you cannot, if your attacks are deflected or prove otherwise useless, work to support those who can. It is vain to hope to kill him, but he can be whittled down enough that he will flee back to the ocean, and if we hurt him enough, it may delay the time before he is capable of making another attack elsewhere.”

The windows started to rattle. The gloom outside was suffocating, the rain was impossible to ignore, growing louder than the ongoing conversations. Legend raised one hand and, after a few moments, conversation subsided, leaving just the rattle of windows and the wail of the wind.

“This is what the Endbringers are. As of yet, we’ve been unable to stop them, unable to get through even one confrontation without grievous losses, be it civilian casualties, the loss of a city, or the loss of the lives of some of the bravest and strongest of us. And they will keep coming, one after another, winning these small victories, and winning some major ones.”

One of the windows buckled, cracked in a way that nearly made Taylor flinch. Parian reached over, touching her shoulder, and though she could only see the other girl’s eyes, it was clear she was worried. Trying to put on her game face, Taylor murmured “thanks” before giving her a shaky smile. Parian deflated, fingers clenching down a bit harder on her shoulder before finally pulling away.

Parian and her had been something close to partners when she first started out. Maybe it was because Taylor had shown little-to-no inclination towards inciting violence, maybe it was because she repaired enough streets she might’ve randomly fixed the street that Parian’s home was on—she didn’t really know. Point was, Parian had reached out to her when so few would, when others would’ve told her to join the Wards, join a gang, or get the fuck out. She didn’t know Parian too well, there’d always been a distance between them, professionalism and Taylor’s own social dysfunctions kept anything close to a friendship from forming, but they’d had a lot of talks and had hung out in their masks on a few occasions.

Leviathan wasn’t even here yet, but Taylor already knew she’d miss those moments. Even if both of them lived, she didn’t think Leviathan would be so kind to leave Brockton unscathed, not enough to reclaim those moments in the near future.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder, drawing her gaze. It was Vista, her hand outstretched with what looked to be a watch in it. Taylor reached out to take it, Vista miming the act of wrapping it around her wrist giving Taylor enough of an impetus to do it herself. Just as she finished clasping the thing on, it  _ beeped _ at her once, before displaying the text ‘name?’.

Parian, having apparently grown tired of her fumbling, leaned over and said “Renovate”. The armband’s screen blinked once, before displaying a yes/no text box with her name above it and a question about whether or not that was correct. Taylor tapped yes, unwilling to make a fool of herself again. At least they’d bothered to leave little indicators over each button, the right being emergency and the other letting her send messages to everyone.

“Capes! If you have faced an Endbringer before, stand!”

Taylor saw a handful of those near her doing just that, but the bulk majority - just like her - remained firmly rooted in their chairs. Parian’s hand, shaky and clammy, reached over and grasped her arm. Taylor, not a social expert but getting just what situations like these could do to a person, let her.

Armsmaster was pointing off towards one of the other local gang groups—Taylor was pretty sure they were ‘The Troupe’? Something about a teleporter who swapped places with people, she was pretty sure—while leaning in towards Miss Militia to say something. Taylor couldn’t bring herself to pay much attention to it—it didn’t matter what the leader of her local branch of the Protectorate was gossiping about. Leviathan was at their doorstep.

“We are splitting you into groups based on your abilities! If you are confident you can take a hit from Leviathan and get up afterwards, or if you have the ability to produce expendable combatants, we need you on the front line! You will be directed by Alexandria and Dragon!”

Taylor glanced furtively at Parian, who had gone stock still. Mustering what was left of her spine, Taylor leaned over. “That’s you,” she mumbled, to which Parian let out a noise between a sob and a laugh.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

Parian got up, stiffly let go of Taylor’s arm, and moved off towards one of Dragon’s drones, her hands clenched at her side.

Deciding not to look too closely at Armsmaster apparently talking down to a blonde teenage girl, Taylor remained seated as Legend called for the hand-to-hand combatants. A considerable amount of the E88 filtered towards Chevalier, at the very least, and so did a bulk majority of the other independents. Taylor was relatively shocked; she hadn’t figured that there were that many people with close-quarters powers in Brockton, but then again a lot does tend to get lost in the glare from people like Purity and Miss Militia.

“Those who can create forcefields, telekinesis, whatever your power, if you can interrupt Leviathan’s movements or help reduce the impacts of the waves, you’re the backup defense! Bastion will direct you!”

Then it was her turn.

Taylor’s legs obeyed her request to rise, though her hands didn’t stop shaking. She made her way towards what she could vaguely remember of Bastion’s description, mostly from the big news case about him using some less than generous words to describe a kid who wanted an autograph that he’d come across on patrol once. He’d done it as a joke, but the fallout from it had been pretty nasty—not unjustifiably, too, he’d gone off on a pretty racist rant.

Bastion was, for lack of a better word, a large man. His costume was armored, somewhere between functional military gear - all camo and big leather boots - but with overlapping plates of what looked like solid steel. He was probably halfway to seven feet in height, and he had a burly build. His mask was about as neutral as you could get with PRT capes, a simple visor that covered everything from his eyebrows to the tip of his nose, all one uniform green color.

Aside from her and Bastion, there looked to be about a dozen other people here, including - speak of the devil - Leyline. Leyline was short, shorter than her, but visible masculine, with a crop of blonde hair, a military officer’s outfit for his costume, white gloves, and a mask that looked like something out of a masquerade party. He was a well-rounded and well-regarded hero, generating bursts of blue energy that spread across and into the earth, letting him control, stretch and shape the resulting material. There’d been a long and drawn-out debate on whether or not he generated matter or simply manipulated it, and the end result was that it was both, which had satisfied nobody.

God. It’d been two years since she’d seen that on PHO.

Just as she was about to open her mouth to, well, introduce herself and find where things were heading, Bastion suddenly swung around. His power rolled across his person, snapping into place near a wall and forming numerous thin forcefields. The wall - and the building - buckled. Most of it gave in to the wave, shattering, though thankfully Bastion’s power kept it from falling into the room, leaving it to leak into the lobby instead. Water, however, rushed into the gaps created by the destruction, bringing with it loose plants, mud, and garbage it had torn off of other buildings, not to mention the unfortunate addition of freezing cold water.

Then the rest of the building started to shudder. Taylor could feel that, not just physically but with whatever qualified as her secondary sense for her power. Things were breaking, and while the massive gaps in her perception didn’t let her see  _ too _ much, at the very least she figured they had no more than—

—she was outside. Her throat hurt, she could barely breathe, and Strider looked close to haggard. Behind her, there was an unsteady lurch, and then the identifiable sound of something  _ giving _ . Glancing back, Taylor watched morbidly as the building she had just been in folded in on itself, collapsing into a plume of dust and bent rebar, surrounded by whitewater rapids.

They’d been teleported onto a road, a ways uphill from the boardwalk, which was mostly trashed. What was left of the area was slick with mud and covered in broken bits of wood - the actual boardwalk, the docks, were probably never going to be repaired, not after this. None of that was important, because she could see it. It really was an it, too, pronouns be damned, it was a monster. Bipedal, loosely, with hunched shoulders and an impossibly large body. Water churned around it like it was angry, spraying off to take chunks out of buildings or to rush forward, picking everything from garbage to architecture up, only to then drag it back out towards the ocean.

Legend shouted something, the ringing in Taylor’s ears didn’t really process it. The Endbringer rapidly approached, leaving behind echoes of himself, watery duplicates that carved furrows into the concrete it impacted. It moved in a fundamentally uncanny way, eyes following everyone, slipping back and forth, glowing in the dim of the rain. It never lingered on anyone, nor did its head move an inch, only ever adjusting to the motion of its body as it charged forwards.

Then it  _ moved _ .

It was all reflex, really. Taylor just _ flinched _ , did the first thing that came to mind and slammed the heel of her shoe into the ground. Her power came to her aid, spreading out into the concrete and then erupting, far larger than she ever let herself show before. Meters of concrete, stone and earth erupted, a pillar forged from her panic, large enough to cover her and whoever was closest, the water that shot forward punching holes into the surface of the pillar she made, leaving behind ever-widening cracks.

“Run!” The words came out of her mouth before she could stop herself, her legs listening to her own demand while those who she’d protected from the spray did the same. The pillar collapsed, buckling beneath the damage, and shattered into a hundred different pieces.

Dimly, Taylor could hear her armband naming off the casualties.

Leviathan didn’t stop. There was no reprieve, this wasn’t a game or a fantasy tale or a pitched battle. It just kept going, long body whipping around, its tail disemboweling one person and shattering another against the rocks. Legend swerved in from above, unleashing a hail of lasers which managed to shove it back a bit, but not enough. Water rose towards Legend, forming sharp pressurized spikes that he swerved and ducked through, narrowly missing his own death, before Leviathan grew bored of him and turned back towards the group of fliers charging towards it, seemingly led by Alexandria.

Taylor felt her legs moving before she even saw the wave. It was horrifying, the image of it crawling across the ocean, growing ever-larger, ever-darker. She rushed towards Bastion without any better options, skidding to a halt just next to him. “Can you give me twenty feet in either direction? That and how tall is that?”

Bastion gave her a shrewd look before quickly glancing back towards the wave. “Thirty feet?”

Christ. Taylor grit her teeth, let her breath come out more slowly, gradually. The wave was coming in fast, forcefields - the ones that needed more time, anyway - began to take shape, one a glass-like solid energy that seemed to grow up from the earth into bush-like structures, another being made up of melted stone and earth burbling up into tough-looking walls.

Bastion himself was already moving off to the right. Nobody else was near, and the closest cape to her was Vista. She could do this.

Using her power with intent was easier and more difficult in their own ways. Reactively, her power did a lot of the leg work, reshaping any earth she interacted with to the general specifics of her desire, whether that was a shelter, a wall, or just something to block the way. It was quick, but it was crude, and it was often times fragile, largely due to the poor shape of the thing. To shape the earth itself with intent was different, and more taxing.

Body movements were important to her power. She wasn’t sure why, but they just were; punches and kicks and stomps, usually, translated into the manipulation of earth. Any movement could generate any sized result, she didn’t have to drop from fifty feet to make big walls and she didn’t need to make small taps of her feet against the ground to make tiny alterations, but there was  _ something _ there that she was missing—that she just hadn’t really figured out yet with her power. In the end, though, it only mattered so much. They needed a wall to stop the wave, and while it might be ugly and probably fall apart soon after it was made, she could do exactly that.

Raising one leg up, Taylor focused. She felt her power humming away beneath her skin, a steady pulse, a vibration. She honed it, focused it, and then brought her leg down. Her power spread out, like ink through water, expanding and thinning, perpetually replenished by her intent, her pushing her power further and further down. The way it moved was like if water had hard edges, smooth and malleable but with absolute limits, hard points that better reflected the earth. Eyes still closed, with all of that power aimed down, Taylor pulled it  _ up _ .

The ground in front of her buckled and then exploded. Stone and concrete pushed out a diagonal, just in front of her foot, spreading out like a wide fan. The end result wasn’t a horizontal wall, but more of a cliff, a sloping surface that could be walked on from the side she was on, but not the other. She kept pushing, kept forcing the earth to rise, to spread out and encompass that area she asked for.

The wave surged forward, just a little taller than her wall, and slammed into it.

Her wall barely shook.

Belatedly, she noticed that a few of the nearby buildings had been, er, a bit uprooted. It wasn’t really the time to feel embarrassed about that - horrifying death monster bearing down on them and all - but she still couldn’t really help it. She’d managed to fuck up a 7-11, the world would just have to cope.

Leviathan responded by  _ climbing the wall _ and using it as a way to launch itself onto the nearest building, its massive fingers carving gaping holes into the surface of the apartment, dragging down walls as it shot upwards. Two capes, one brandishing what looked to be a Tinkertech weapon, were smeared across the surface of the roof as it and what looked like a pond’s worth of water impacted it at a similar speed to a bullet. The building itself fared no better, crumpling like a house of cards, the debris clipping a few of the retreating capes, one being buried beneath a large piece of metal, his scream audible even from nearly a hundred feet away.

From beneath the rubble, Leviathan erupted like a geyser. Debris shot out in all directions, carried on by the blast of water, torn apart into smaller and far more sharp pieces. Taylor kicked down again, less instinctively this time around, and managed to huddle behind the half-wall her power formed, listening as hundreds of tiny metal bits slashed and bit into the rudimentary surface she’d just made.

All the while, her armband didn’t stop reporting casualties.

She really wished she could mute it.

Glancing up from her shelter, Leviathan was long gone. Others, like her, gradually rose from their places, Vista among them. The Ward in question glanced her way, head tilted to one side, before shrugging and fiddling with her watch, saying something into it. Taylor turned her gaze back to the ocean, noticing another wave - this one blessedly smaller - making its way towards the coastline.

“Do you think you could reinforce some of the gaps?” Vista came out of nowhere, which was enough to make Taylor flinch. They shared a short moment of awkward, terse silence, before Taylor begrudgingly nodded. Vista motioned for her to follow, leading her towards the more cluttered city center.

“Thinkers said you were sandbagging,” Vista blurted. “Armsmaster was worried there was something wrong with you or your power, and that we might have another problem on our hands.”

Taylor wasn’t really sure how to take that.

“Glad that you used your full power here, though,” she continued. It wasn’t hard to see that she was looking for something to fill the silence. “I did appreciate you fixing up those streets but, y’know, it can only be so useful, right?”

She wasn’t wrong, not really.

Vista turned left and just about tripped, and for good reason. As Taylor turned the corner, Leviathan was just,  _ there _ . Alexandria and about two-dozen others were laying into it while what looked to be twisted space locked the Endbringer to the ground. Water, on occasion, rose up to make an attempt to slash or pierce through the Brute brigade, and only really managed one out of two or three times, leaving behind gaping wounds that, in most cases, rapidly healed over.

Taylor slammed her fist into the brickwork to her right, pulsing her power. It listened to her, the building deforming as the stone cracked off, generating a wall that blocked off about half of the street. Her other hand took hold of Vista by the costume and yanked her back. The Ward hissed angrily at her but went suitably quiet when a sudden burst of water punched a head-sized hole in her impromptu barrier.

“Where are we going?” Taylor muttered down at Vista, letting go of her.

The Ward glanced around, squinted, and then did  _ something _ that made Taylor’s stomach churn. A few feet away was now what was clearly the surface of a roof, the edge of the roof happening to give a great view of Leviathan. The only thing was that she wasn’t currently looking towards Leviathan, and the fact that she could see over the edge of the roof was making her head and stomach spin unpleasantly. Vista, apparently unbothered, took hold of her by the sleeve and dragged her across onto the stone surface of the building, a loud _ crack _ signifying space returning to normal.

The fight below continued with or without their help, Alexandria not paying them any sort of attention as she swerved, punched, and kicked at the vulnerable points all across Leviathan’s body.

There was a sound not unlike thunder, and one of the Endbringer’s spatial bindings shattered, and with it about three fliers all but immediately died. Out of the corner of her eye, Taylor noticed Chevalier hopping away, brandishing a large blade that, when swung, sliced into Leviathan when not a whole lot else did.

A tug on her shirt drew her attention back to Vista, who had somehow managed to stretch space to somewhere else. Not wanting to dwell on the head-aching spatial warping, Taylor simply followed after, stepping onto a very abruptly quiet rooftop. For a single moment, aside from the now-faint Endbringer siren, the world just  _ was _ . There was no rushing water, no screams, no crashes or cracks, just the wind, the siren, and Vista.

Speaking of, Taylor averted her eyes as Vista did something else with her power, pinching the space between the rooftop and a far noisier street. She could see Bastion there, among other capes. It wasn’t as noisy as it had been near Alexandria, but it wasn’t really quiet, either. Not like it had been.

Taylor stepped off onto the street. Bastion, noticing her appearance, started to jog over, Vista meeting him halfway.

The sound of combat was there, but still distant.

“Renovate, right?” Bastion yelled over the rain, Taylor nodding towards him. “Geokinetic? Big walls?” Another nod. “Good, okay, can you set up some simple barricades? Just near here. We’re pretty sure he’s gonna end up coming this way soon.”

_ Why aren’t you running _ was what she wanted to say. Instead, she managed to nod once again and started making her way up the street. The water over here only got up to her ankles, and barely moved, a contrast to the muddy, fast-moving slog that was just a little ways downhill. The street itself was pretty long, made for two three-lane roads with a barrier between them full of greenery. There wasn’t a whole lot of green to look at, admittedly, winter hadn’t been so long ago that everything had grown back in, not to mention the winds and cold rain probably weren’t doing plant growth any favors.

Shaking her head, Taylor jerked her arm up, imparting just a bit of her power into the motion. The ground in front of her shot up about four feet, then another three when she jerked again, wincing at the sight of now-ruined cables near the bottom. She’d have to work on her awareness sooner or later, but fixing whatever she just broke could be dealt with later.

By the time Taylor repeated this about six other times, leaving behind little person-sized nooks to hide away in, the water was surging quite a bit harder and had risen up to mid-calf. The sound of fighting was considerably closer, and every few seconds a flier would appear, usually sending off a ranged attack off towards where she assumed Leviathan was. Not wanting to get too close to it, Taylor retreated, using the impact of her heel against the concrete to create smaller embankments. Large enough to maybe protect someone if they’re very lucky, but she wasn’t going to pay too much attention to them, not yet.

Coming to a halt next to a harried-looking Bastion who was currently reinforcing another building, he glanced back at her, then towards the road. “Good,” he said, turning his focus back to his work. “We’re gonna lock him down hard here, or at least try to. We’re due for another wave soon, and if they can—”

Leviathan flew into the street, shattering against an unreinforced building. A contingent of heroes flew in after it, lasers, fireballs, solid shadow projectiles; dozens of blasts rained down on it, only ever scraping or taking small bits off of it. The beast rose out of the rubble, a sudden surge of water rushing in from one of the streets Taylor couldn’t see, washing into the one she was on and beginning to flood down towards all of them.

Then Lung slammed into Leviathan.

He was about as ramped up as Taylor had ever seen him, a raging draconic figure cloaked by streams of fire that occasionally shot off, melting away nearby bits of architecture, scorching the ground. He was getting to Leviathan’s size, though maybe not to its strength, and he almost immediately lost the struggle for dominance, Leviathan directing slicing his tail down a good half-dozen times until Lung’s bottom half sloughed off, only for the hard-won mutilation to vanish as Lung regenerated everything down from mid-belly in about two or three seconds.

Maybe seeing the futility in the grapple, Leviathan wormed around, took hold of Lung, and then threw him at the approaching capes, causing them to break off to avoid him.

Setting into something of a theme, a car slammed into Leviathan. Then another car, a limousine, and that one managed to press it back, even if only a bit. Lastly, a dumpster moving about the speed of a bullet hit it, sending it onto its back and further into the little nook they’d penned it into.

Alexandria completed the combo, rocketing down from above and slamming her fist into its face, the spray of whatever qualified as blood both vindicating and more than a little satisfying.

That was, at least, until she saw the tidal wave warning. It was sudden, a yellow indicator on her arm, and the emergence of what looked to be shielder. He yelled out “to me!”, catching everyone’s attention, while Narwhal - appearing from what looked to be above - began to rapidly layer larger-than-average forcefields together, working to form a wall between the rest of the group and Leviathan.

Seeing Vista nearby, Taylor grabbed hold of the girl’s wrist, shaking her out of a daze, and hauled her towards Shielder. This time, she didn’t complain.

Shielder’s shield went up, coaxing around those who had huddled in. Taylor watched with morbid horror as the water surged forward and met the shield, one of the unlucky few to either not get out of the way in time or behind Shielder dragged along with it, pulping himself against the solid surface. Someone gagged - maybe it was her, she couldn’t tell - and the world shook, shook like an earthquake, her seismic sense roaring as vibrations and quakes crawled in around her, warning her, telling her nothing that she didn’t already know.

Then the water was gone, turned into mist, and Taylor was lurching out of the way to puke onto the concrete, aiming to avoid hitting anyone with it.

Someone grabbed her hair, pulled it back while also nudging her up and back onto her feet. Shielder was slumped off to the side, being hauled up by Glory Girl, and Leviathan—Leviathan was  _ leaping _ again. From building to building, from roof to roof, it only ever landed long enough to rip into the stranded survivors, their deaths left unannounced even while Taylor watched them happen.

Then Myrddin, with a ball of condensed mist above his staff, finally let the attack loose. It didn’t so much shoot towards Leviathan as it blurred and hit it instantly, the impact shattering windows near and making a sound not unlike a gunshot. Leviathan was thrown back and into the building, burying it inside of it but not quite bringing the structure down.

“Seal him off!” someone shouted, though Taylor couldn’t identify too. Her body moved without her, using energy she didn’t feel she had. Her foot kicked into the earth and her arm adjusted the eruption of stone, shaping it as a wide pillar shot nearly horizontally into one side of the wall, stopping just shy of the building. She kicked again, forced the earth she’d already projected to shape itself further out, working to encase what parts of the exterior she could reach in that mix of concrete, stone and dirt.

The others did the same. Vista stretched the walls to be larger, hundreds of multicolored, multi-elemental shields snapped into place, forming barricades. Ice walls bled into walls of what looked like solid fire, all the while being surrounded by a thick, black shadow that seemed to condense on the surface of things it was near, forming opaque crystals that knit together into rudimentary structures, barricades that looked hopefully durable. Vista’s warping got to the point where the building started to look like a slightly-distorted hourglass, wavering ever-so-slightly. All the while, ranged attackers threw volleys into the gaps they could find, impacting Leviathan whenever they got lucky.

Flying capes moved away, carrying people with them as Leviathan thrashed in its cage, trying and failing to free itself. A wall would always erupt into being whenever it tried, and it was with a quiet horror that Taylor noticed that Bastion was _ still inside _ . Always cutting off Leviathan’s exit, but the building, even barricaded as it was, had begun to buckle, crumpling. Taylor reached out to her power, lashed out with one hand and forced the widening cracks in the building’s concrete to reseal, but every fix was met with even more rapid collapse.

She could do nothing.

Again.

She couldn’t protect someone, even with powers, even when a building was collapsing on them. Like she tried with Emma, like how the bombs had broken Winslow and she’d been one of the few people in her class unhurt. Like how she’d found Emma, barely-conscious and bleeding from her head. How the building kept getting worse, how Emma kept yelling, looked at her with glazed eyes, screaming that she was strong, that she wasn’t weak, that she didn’t need help.

Taylor had tried so hard, did so much, and yet the building had kept collapsing and Emma had kept refusing her help. She had triggered, then, broken in a way she couldn’t understand when something buckled and snapped. They were never in any true danger, not for a little while, but the room beside homeroom had folded in on itself like wet cardboard and that had been enough, coupled with all of the other stressors, the feeling of Emma’s blood, sticky and red, between her fingers.

“Just do it!” Bastion yelled, voice hoarse, hard. She was confused, did Vista and him plan this, or?

Next to her, Vista let out a sob.

Leviathan’s thrashing started to make progress, a few of the forcefields broke, her own fortification struggled to remain upright, cracks forming along its surface.

“Fucking do it!”

The building bent, crumpled, and then collapsed entirely on top of Bastion and Leviathan.

Taylor found herself being hugged by Vista, who was making a broken, wet noise into her side. Doing her best to catch her breath and banish the memories of Emma’s blood, Taylor eased a hand down onto the Ward’s head and started to pull both herself and Vista towards the fliers and those who were trying to reposition themselves.

Armsmaster launched forward, halberd in hand, rallying the others as he went. There were already so many dead, but even still, people rose, people tried, passing by broken, dead bodies, brandishing powers. Alexandria floated to the top of the pack, her hands balled into fists at her side.

“Vista?” Taylor mumbled, getting a flinch out of the Ward, who leapt away with blurry, glazed eyes. _ Shit _ , she’s not even here, is she? “Vista, I need you to help others behind us, okay? I need to make a lot of movement to use my power.”

Dazed enough to take orders from her, Vista did just that, running off towards the group of survivors behind them.

Leviathan erupted from the rubble, bruised and bleeding, but nowhere near broken. Alexandria backhanded him back down into it, the thrashing monster catching a few capes out of place, skewering one on a blast of water and shattering another with a lash of its fist.

Taylor’s armband, unwanted, started to count off names again.

Leviathan turned onto her, and things stopped mattering so much. She kicked down and away, the ground surging up in response to her actions, forming a wall that was shattered like so much glass with a single blast of water. Taylor hooked her power into the fragments and threw out her hands, sending the lot of them careening recklessly towards the monster. One managed to slam into his face and knock him to the side, though most of them only clipped him, if they hit at all.

The water responded to an unknown command, erupting into a massive geyser, aimed directly at her. Taylor had just enough time to drag a shield in front of her, pushing her power into it, slamming her heel in a rhythm to reinforce, to drag more stone into her defenses as layer-by-layer it was peeled away. It must’ve only been seconds, if that, but it felt like minutes, the tug-of-war between herself and an Endbringer, a brief moment where her defense met pressurized water easily.

An arm hooked beneath her chest and abruptly yanked her away and into the air, the sound of exploding stone ringing in her ears. She writhed for a moment, unthinkingly, before taking an unsteady breath in and glancing up. Huh. Glory Girl.

“You okay?” Glory Girl asked, already making good speed towards the others. Taylor couldn’t help but feel a bit uncomfortable, the way that Glory Girl’s arm bit into her ribs, but it beat being killed by Leviathan in a fit of pique.

“I’ve been better,” she admitted, her own voice hoarse.

Glancing back at Leviathan, Taylor watched as the Brute brigade fell onto it in clusters. Alexandria rotated in and out, always acting as the anchoring force for the next group, never giving the Endbringer an inch. Vista was being airlifted by what looked to be Aegis, whereas more wounded capes were getting a single flier who moved incredibly fast, but in what looked to be only a single direction at any given time, flicking in and out, grabbing the most wounded first before blurring off to places unseen, probably towards first responders.

Glory Girl plopped her back down onto the roof, Taylor letting out a relieved noise at the feeling of earth beneath her feet. Leviathan was still being battered around, Eidolon having flown back in, generating what looked to be wraiths made out of neon-green lightning that left burning, gaping wounds on whatever they hit, Leviathan included. It was hard to watch, really; for all they were forcing it back and away from the retreating capes, it was still killing people with a mechanical ease that made Taylor’s teeth itch.

Thinking back, Taylor glanced back towards the others on the roof, watching as Grue stiffly spoke to Purity, whose body language screamed her own unwillingness to be there. She might be on solid ground, but she couldn’t really use her powers on the building; it was already in obvious disarray, even with a cursory glance, and ripping out chunks to send hurtling at Leviathan would do the structural integrity of the roof nothing good.

The fuck was she even supposed to  _ do _ ?

Turning back to the fighting, Taylor caught sight of Lung again. Somehow, he’d grown even more, and was close to a head over Leviathan’s own height. Not a whole lot, in the grand scheme of things, but part of her brain wasn’t at all into the concept of Lung not having a cap to his growth. He bore down on Leviathan while the other Brutes pulled away to take a brief rest, the dragon’s jaw latching onto Leviathan’s throat, clenching and tearing back, hauling relatively thick strips of flesh off of the Endbringer, who thrashed violently, waves curling around its person.

In most cases, you’d think water beats fire. That was true, to an extent, Lung’s fire seemed to sputter and hiss against the flood of water that washed towards it, but for every inch some of the water made, the fire gained two. Steam hung in the air, turning into low-lying fog as water vaporized instantly. All the while, Lung pressed Leviathan into the concrete, biting and ripping chunks of flesh away, the fire collecting into larger and larger amounts, building into a single burning sun above his body, before dropping down towards the trapped Endbringer in a sudden burst of speed.

The explosion hurt Taylor’s eyes.

When the black spots in her vision faded, she was met with something out of an old-aged monster movie. The space around Lung and Leviathan had been scorched black, concrete bubbling and hissing as water rushed back to fill in where the fire had vaporized it. Leviathan was still pinned and looked to be in a genuinely wounded state, flesh peeled back all across the top half of its body, exposing pulsing muscle, all but the single separate eye dimmed and empty, large gouges torn out of the space around its neck. By contrast, Lung looked near-immaculate, if you ignored all the bloodstains on his person.

Something wasn’t right.

Alexandria swooped in, along with about twenty other fliers, powers rising to the surface, firing off towards Lung while others swooped in, hoping to hit Leviathan. The ground buckled, churned, the water went still for a  _ single _ , terrifying moment, before all converging in on Lung, crashing into him on all sides, pipes erupting from beneath the earth, hauled to the surface by the water pressure. Spears of water so pressurized they were solid slotted into Lung’s body, hundreds of them at once, severing limbs and turning him into a morbid, watery pincushion.

Then the water exploded, and there wasn’t a whole lot left of Lung anymore.

_ Lung deceased, CD-5. _

Leviathan rose, wounded and oozing but undeterred. Long limbs reached out, fingers splaying wide in a grotesquely human expression, like it was stretching after a long nap. The water surged forward from where it had once again gone still, turning back into a rapid river, but one that kept growing. It seemed to be directing the water back around itself, forming a whirlpool of harsh rapids, building and churning as structures near it buckled and then collapsed beneath the pressure.

Taylor turned and started to run towards the other side of the roof. They were still arguing, still doing exactly fuck all, and _ Leviathan was fucking down there building up an attack _ . “Run!”

Purity glanced up from her shouting match with Grue, head tilted to one side. “What do y—”

Whatever hit the building, it didn’t pull its punches. Taylor felt it crumple, the shape deforming like a dented aluminum can. Grue let out a shout while Purity lifted off, taking hold of Grue and Taylor in one hand each. They fell for a short moment before whatever mechanic allowed Purity to fly kicked in, a crack of churning white light exploding out from her person, stopping their free-fall and turning it into a messy, chaotic, but not deadly impact with the flooded streets below.

Taylor managed to put her arm in the way of her face, grimacing as she hit the ground and felt something in her arm light up in agony. It was better than ending up with a concussion, or having a face-wound that might impede her version, but fuck her running it still hurt like a bitch to hit the ground from five feet at an odd angle. Grue was quite a bit better, landing from his fall with a grunt but not looking all that wounded by it.

Pressing her good arm onto the water, Taylor climbed stiffly back to her feet. She looked back towards the building they’d been on and winced. It had fallen to the side, taking what looked to be a pharmacy with it when it collapsed, but at least she had direct line of sight with Leviathan. Bloody though the Endbringer might be, it was giving not a single person, not Eidolon or Alexandria, a single inch.

Taylor was starting to get the impression that, for all the body-sized wound looked bad, it probably wasn’t. At the very least, going by how deep the gouges went versus the peeled off skin, it wasn’t even close. Lung had probably only managed to strip a layer off of the Endbringer, enough to hurt, but not enough to stop. Then again, was that any real surprise? For all that Lung had been a horrifying, nightmarish figure in Brockton Bay, he was no Eidolon or Legend, and neither of them had managed to hurt Leviathan enough to do any lasting damage.

They’d gotten overconfident, like Legend said they would. The wound was visible, ugly, it looked awful, but with a sense of dawning horror, Taylor quietly realized that it didn’t do enough. Would they be able to do enough before he ripped open the aquifer? Was it already too late? She... she didn’t really know how long they’d been fighting for, it felt like a long time but her memories didn’t back that idea up, and—and.

“We need to move,” a floating cape said, her costume a patterned brown bodysuit overlaid by bits of bronze armor and pipes, her mask connected to what seemed to be a bowler hat rimmed in yet more bronze. “Alexandria’s regrouping further into the city and working to draw Leviathan in. Armsmaster has some sort of plan, but you all really need to move. Leviathan’s flooding the area already and there’s nothing we can really do to stop it. Does anyone here need transport?”

Taylor raised her good hand. Grue did the same. Purity just started to float, by contrast, angling off and away from the group as she gradually ascended.

“I can do two,” the cape continued, extending one of her hands. The space distorted for a second before beginning to rapidly harden into an opaque, sunlight-colored material that looked and felt a bit like glass or ceramic. It seemed tough enough, and it floated a few inches off the ground, so Taylor didn’t ask any questions as she stepped onto it alongside Grue. The platform rose with the flying cape, and all around her other bits of the material started snapping into existence, each one with a different corresponding color. Most of the objects were weapons that angled themselves and rocketed off towards Leviathan as they passed, one spear the color of mint hitting Leviathan’s back and shattering, spreading a similar-colored goop across Leviathan’s back that began to rapidly harden. A sword the color of blood followed it, exploding into a burst of crimson flames that seemed attracted to the hardened goop, the fire growing considerably in size, tinged with green.

Leviathan didn’t even respond to the attack, drawing a frustrated noise out of their escort.

Once Leviathan was out of sight, they started to speed up. Taylor could already see the congregation, recognizing a handful of the fliers as ones who had been near Alexandria. Narwhal, looking battered and bruised in a way that Taylor had never seen before, hovered among the majority of them, wide cuts on her person clogged by carefully-placed forcefields. Others in the group included Purity, who had made it over faster than them, Kaiser, who was standing on the ground and talking with someone, but other than that there was a depressing lack of recognizable faces. She did notice Vista, however, not that she made it easy; she was huddled off to the side with Aegis and Gallant, from the looks of it, while Kid Win kept watch on his hoverboard above the three of them.

“Could you set me down near them?” Taylor asked, getting a look from both Grue and her transport. The flying cape shrugged and angled her descent, letting Taylor off just short of the Brockton Bay Wards. Vista’s head turned to her, and something in her shoulders relaxed. Aegis, bloodied but regenerating, waved her over from where he sat, sans a leg.

Not willing to think too much about Aegis’ dismemberment, Taylor walked closer, not quite jogging, but also not quite walking. The air was thick with urgency and, frankly, she wasn’t about to dawdle or take her time when Leviathan wasn’t all that far away.

“Hey,” Aegis said when she was finally in earshot. “Thanks for looking after Vista.”

The girl in question seemed almost catatonic, but did manage to drum up enough energy to send a frustrated glare towards Aegis, who didn’t seem all that bothered by it.

Taylor shook her head, grimacing as some of it got stuck. It was probably mud. “It’s fine, I—I get that, you know?”

Aegis’ smile was fragile, but not unkind. “Yeah. This is your first big fight, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It’s only been a month, and...”

Vista grimaced. “Leviathan.”

“This is the fallback point though, right?” Taylor quickly asked, getting a round of nods from everyone but Kid Win. “What do I need to do, and what are we going to do?”

“We’re waiting on Armsmaster,” Aegis explained, his face growing tense. “But if he isn’t around soon, command defaults to Miss Militia, who is here, thankfully.”

“Where could he even be?” Vista mumbled from where she sat, pulling further into herself. Gallant rested a hand against her shoulder, something that seemed to calm her down enough to untense her own legs.

The silence stretched on, nervous and tense and stiff. Nothing really changed for the next few minutes aside from the sound of fighting off in the distance and the constant arrival and departure of wounded capes. Fliers brought people in by the armful, some remaining alive long enough, with the ones who didn’t being placed down with the rest on an elevated platform that she was pretty sure Dragon made. The bodies were piling up, person-by-person, though they were dwarfed by the sheer number of wounded who were being handed off to people who could move far distances quickly or who could teleport in some way, with those who hadn’t yet been ferried off sitting near the platform in various states of health.

“Can you make some walls?” A cape she didn’t have a name for asked. His accent was foreign, but she couldn’t place it; it sounded somewhere between Italian and French, and yet neither at the same time. Taylor glanced towards the Wards, who nodded, and then towards Miss Militia, who had crept closer over the last couple of minutes, who also gave her assent. Turning back to the cape - his costume being a pretty generic bodysuit with pinstripe pattern and a red matador’s cloak - Taylor nodded awkwardly.

Looking to what she had to work with, the first thing she noticed was that they were near the Brockton Memorial Park. It was a quaint, underfunded place that, if she was remembering correctly, people mostly used to get high. The second thing she noticed was that for all they were blocked in - buildings on either side and only the park behind them - that wasn’t exactly a bad thing. Refusing to think too deeply about it, Taylor gauged the size of the group and made her decision.

She started first with the left side of the street, tapping her heel down and pushing her power to obey. The gaps between the buildings, however small, vanished as brickwork and concrete shaped itself in a violent jerk, filling in the spaces. Next, she raised her leg up and then brought it down, her power directing the earth in front of her to rise in a straight wall, fifteen feet tall and long enough that it masked most of the street, with the only exception being the intersection, for what might be obvious reasons. She left that wall as it was, turning back and walking towards the other side, repeating what she did before, closing the gaps between the buildings included.

Next came the tricky part. She didn’t want to fully box them in, but they did need a breakwater of some kind to hopefully circumvent some of the nastier tidal waves. Lowering her center of mass, Taylor pushed her power out, shut her eyes, and worked completely from instinct, spreading metaphorical fingers out and wrenching the area up. The effect was instant, a sharp tremor filling the street as the planning area was raised a solid five feet, Taylor slumping forward, her breath coming out as hard, pleading gasps. Her body felt weak, used up, but she knew that was temporary.

“This good enough?” She sounded slurred to her own ears, and probably to everyone else’s. Miss Militia nodded genially in her direction before stalking off to the edge of the raised area, a pistol forming in her hand. She aimed it skyward and then did her level best to empty the entire clip, the area going silent.

“Everyone who can block Leviathan come forward,” Miss Militia yelled, the already-aged memory of Legend doing the same coming to mind. Stumbling to her feet, Taylor went forward. Glancing behind her at the sound of footsteps, she caught Vista, looking a bit more resolute, if shaky and dead-eyed, right behind her.

“Fliers!” She called next, to which a significant bulk of the grounded capes lifted up into the air. “If you’re capable of long ranged attacks, get some elevation and prepare for his approach. If you’re a Brute, come to the front, and if you can do damage, but can’t take it, find a way to work with both packs.”

Worryingly, Taylor could hear the sounds of combat again, the noise of buildings shaking and breaking.

“Everyone else, find positions you’re most comfortable with! In the event we cannot hold him back, we retreat and find another staging point. Dragon will keep us all notified, are we clear?”

Nobody said anything, most were too tired to, but Miss Militia seemed satisfied regardless. The energy in her hands shifted once again, taking the shape of a long metal tube—a rocket launcher of some kind, Taylor was pretty sure.

Tension sat heavy in the air, weighing her down. She felt her energy trickle back into place, the strain of overuse fading rapidly and with little evidence it was ever there. She clenched her body, heel raised off the ground just in case she needed to create a wall of earth to protect herself. The fighting grew closer, she could see others who had been with Alexandria swerving up and out of the skyline, a new mash of powers to the ones she saw last time. One person generated waves of purple needles all around him that took off at speeds she couldn’t follow, converging down on Leviathan all at the same time, exploding into hundreds of tiny detonations. Another generated a silver-colored beam that swung back and forth from being highly pressurized and seemingly really powerful, but with the cape having difficulties aiming it, and being loose and seemingly very accurate, but probably not all that damaging.

Armsmaster appeared in the street, halberd brandished and missing an  _ entire fucking arm _ . Leviathan followed, loping forward with an unsteady gait, a deep gouge present across its person, starting from the monster’s nape all the way down to its hip. The deepest and most significant wound to date, she was pretty sure. The ranged fliers unleashed a volley, a dozen or more projectiles converging and slamming into Leviathan’s side, sending it hurtling off and down the street from the sheer excess of it all, while Armsmaster bade a gradual retreat towards the raised area. Alexandria and her severely-diminished group of fliers followed, most of the ones left alive being Brutes, all swooping down to further shove Leviathan back.

“Miss Militia!” Armsmaster called out, his power armor enabling him to leap onto the raised surface, his head swivelling towards her with an intentionally blank look on his face, before smoothly turning back to his second-in-command. “Scion is assumed to be less than a minute out.”

That got a sigh of something close to, but not quite, relief. Taylor felt the same—the fight was nearly over, in that case.

“We need to get you a healer,” Miss Militia started, reaching out towards Armsmaster only to be rebuked with a sharp shake of his head. Even with her scarf on, the frown that curled over her expression wasn’t difficult to miss.

Turning back towards the Endbringer, Armsmaster fiddled with some part of his power armor, a  _ hiss _ of pressure rising from his shoulder, the armor constricting down around it, preventing the blood from flowing. “We don’t have the resources, or the time.”

He wasn’t wrong. Leviathan, however pushed back, wasn’t being put down. A surge of water bracketed the Brutes, her armband chiming out with the deaths of at least four—no, five capes. Its entire body swivelled, turned towards an approaching Armsmaster, his halbert brandished in one hand. Alexandria swerved down in an attempt to stop him from surging forward, from getting near Armsmaster, only to be backhanded and sent through more than one building, if the sound she made was any indication.

In a twisted, broken mirror to when Leviathan first charged, it happened again. It moved so fast Taylor couldn’t follow it, it was at the far end of the street one second and swinging its arm down at Armsmaster the next. The water echo carried forward even when Armsmaster deflected the incoming blow, shattering part of the raised ground she’d made, sending tremors through the area. The storm drains surged, water exploding up into geysers, snaking forward in an attempt to kill everyone and everything they could reach, and there wasn’t a whole lot that much water couldn’t.

Taylor lashed out with her foot, and the earth responded. The earth buckled off to Leviathan’s right and then  _ erupted _ , a pillar of earth impacting it hard enough to throw it to the side, the geysers wavering, most of the water splashing down onto the flooded ground. Leviathan punched the pillar, for lack of a better word, and Taylor took hold of the fragments and shoved them back, throwing her fist out in a sloppy swing that directed the now-floating bits of concrete back at Leviathan with a slight curve. Vista did something to them as she did, as about half of them grew to the size of a school bus while retaining the significant speed she’d chucked them at, Leviathan getting hit four separate times by four equally large boulders, sending it careening into the wall of what looked to be a community center.

Armsmaster didn’t ignore his advantage. His halberd swung out, met flesh, and instead of leaving behind a small cut, or maybe a larger wound, but otherwise being ineffective, the halberd  _ kept moving _ . The monster’s torso wound made quite a bit more sense, after watching Armsmaster sever the majority of Leviathan’s tail with a single powerful swing.

That, it seemed, was too much for the Endbringer. It didn’t scream, or howl, or yell, she was pretty sure Leviathan didn’t actually make any noises like that, but for whatever reason, the atmosphere just  _ changed. _ Water erupted, peeling itself free of every nook and cranny, and converged itself near-instantly into a mass of flooding, churning water. It wasn’t quite a wave, it didn’t bank or arc or anything close to that, and the waves hadn’t been able to make it this far inland quite yet, but the end result was that it functioned in a similar manner to those waves.

A dozen shields of light erupted into being - Narwhal - and before she really knew what she was doing, Taylor did much the same. Her power came easily to her, immensely so, a horizontal wall erupting out from where she slammed her foot down, taking up enough space and constructed high enough that when the water hit it and the half-dozen other forcefields, for a single moment, it  _ held. _

Then the cracks started. It wasn’t just in her own wall, but in everyone else’s. The pressurized water kept coming, kept forcing the cracks wider. Water spilled in from the gaps, flooding the foot of the raised area, water surging unnaturally, trying to get to them. Taylor reached out with both hands, steadied herself on the ground, and pushed on her power, forced the cracks closed, but for every one she did, two more formed. It was a losing battle, but there were dozens of people grounded near her, wounded heroes and villains who would die if they didn’t hold out, if they couldn’t.

Taylor wasn’t sure who was the first to break, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t her. A woman screamed, collapsing to the floor if the dull thud was any indication, and about a quarter of the shields in place shattered into a hundred prismatic shards. Water surged in easily, wrapped around the other forcefields and crushed them like a clenched fist, taking chunks of her own fortification with it.

The water exploded forward, surging over some of the recently-wounded and slamming into her legs with enough force to bruise, maybe even break bones if she’d been caught between it and a wall. Taylor tried to angle herself towards the park, but the tides weren’t so kind, the currents dragging her to the side and slamming her directly into a wall of her own making, a scream escaping her lips as something in her arm  _ gave _ , her mind exploding with white-hot agony. The tides continued dragging her, scraping the broken arm along the rough hardened surface, only to abruptly  _ stop _ . It wasn’t like everything immediately stopped moving, the tides still moved forwards, but the intent was gone, and she was rather easily washed out and onto the ruined, muddy grass of the park after a few more moments of floating.

Taylor, carefully avoiding looking at her own arm out of fear that it would be worse than the agony implied it would be, choked down the bile in her throat and forced herself to look where she last saw Leviathan. Scion was there, a floating, golden man, the strongest parahuman. Finally, something close to a sob left her mouth, though her eyes were dry, and she let her head bow back, glancing up towards the rain clouds as the sound of Scion carving chunks out of Leviathan grew more and more distant.

For a time, the world was silent. At some point, the Endbringer sirens had turned off, probably due to water damage or being intentionally sabotaged. The water around her still moved, but it was thinning out, draining into the various bits of infrastructure left mostly unmolested by Leviathan’s rampage. Brockton had always been a rainy city, after all, and even if most of the piping was probably ruined it did at least know how to redirect the water flow towards a place where it could hopefully be stored, at least for a time.

Struggling to roll over, Taylor splashed around in the thinning water, her back coming away muddy as she dug her good hand into the dirt. Hauling herself to her feet was a trial by agony, every errant movement igniting some unseen wound, bruise, or further causing her arm more pain. She glanced a look at it for the time being, saw no bones sticking out, but also tried not to dwell on how her hand was twisted in the wrong direction. It was a surprise just how well she took the pain, honestly, she’d expected to end up puking or something. Maybe it was the adrenaline though, or the shock, it probably didn’t matter.

Finally on her feet, however woozy she was, Taylor made the unfortunate trek back towards where she had been before. She passed by a number of moaning bodies, and an even larger number of worryingly silent ones. She did her best to nudge people who were laying face-down over, and in one case even had to use a bit of her power to raise a man with some sort of anti-movement power off the ground with a bit of her power, if only because she legitimately couldn’t roll him over. She wasn’t sure which ones were corpses - her glasses were blurry and wet which meant identifying the rise and fall of someone’s chest near impossible, and she wasn’t really equipped to spend an hour checking everyone's pulse, what with the faulty arm - and so she mostly kept moving.

By the time she’d arrived back at the raised platform, begrudgingly used her power to generate a sloped surface she could get up, others had done the same. Glory Girl was clutching Gallant to her chest, the man’s mask half-broken but his face looking, if not in good humor, at least alive. Vista and Aegis were sitting alone again, while Kid Win was hovering over Armsmaster’s downed body alongside a small fleet of Dragon’s drones. Miss Militia was preferring her right leg instead of her left and looking plenty stoic, while a few others odds-and-ends started to filter in, whether by flight or, in Parian’s case, by mounted stuffed animal.

Speaking of Parian, Taylor waved her over.

“Renovate,” Parian sounded a bit breathless, but looked mostly unharmed, ignoring the bit of her mask that had broken off, revealing dusky-brown skin.  _ Huh _ . “You’re okay, god you’re  _ okay _ .”

Taylor blinked. “Aside from a broken arm, I guess? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“It announced that you were dead,” she said quickly, pointing down at what remained of the armband. She really should work on self-awareness, huh. The thing looked like it had spent a few hours being scraped against a cheese grater, and so did the rest of her arm for that matter. It was all road-burned, blisters starting to form. It was worrying that, aside from the bone-deep agony of a broken limb, she couldn’t actually  _ feel _ any of that, but she’d unpack that mentally later.

“Well, I’m not.” Taylor said after a moment, tearing her gaze away from her arm. “Are we in the clear, though?”

Parian nodded quickly. “Scion drove him off. I didn’t see any of the fight, I ended up in search and rescue for most of it, but he’s gone.”

Relief flooded through her, to the point where Taylor’s legs buckled. Parian reached out to steady her, only to grab her wounded arm on accident, drawing a plaintive hiss out of Taylor’s mouth. Parian flinched, jumping back a bit, but Taylor raised her good arm to stop an apology. “It’s fine, just, tired I guess.”

“Do you need some help getting to a hospital?” Parian asked, her eyes trained on Taylor’s mangled arm. Begrudgingly, Taylor nodded, to which one of Parian’s protectors - in this case what looked to be an oversized plush leopard that had been dumped into a muddy pit and then retrieved close to a year later - padded forward and sort of lowered itself to allow for her to mount it.

Taylor raised her eyebrow, glancing up at Parian. Maybe part of her mask was broken, or maybe the line of her lips got the expression across, because for the first time since those godforsaken sirens went off, Parian - month-long friend and unfortunately theatrical girl - _ laughed _ . She laughed and she didn’t quite stop, even when laughter turned to wet, mournful sobs, her face buried in the flank of her constructed minion.


End file.
